What I've learned...part 1

[DeanLong]

After over 30 years in the CAD business there are a few things I've learned:

1: Keeping things SIMPLE is always the best bet.

2. Just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD.

3. Nobody ever knows it all

4. Whenever the hype seems too good to be true, it's not true.

5. Nothing worthwhile is easy no matter how much "they" tell you it is.

6. There is always more than one way to model the same thing,

7. Cheating in modeling techniques will ALWAYS come back to bite you in the behind.

8. No CAD software is truly "better" than another. It's the Driver behind the mouse that makes it great or a POS.

9. Every "enhancement" hyped by the "Man" is simply the spit shined version of the blood, sweat and tears methods us "Geezers" figured out long ago.

10. Be true, honorable, truthful, teachable and willing to pay forward the skills you have attained.

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[BrianMartin]

I could add a few more... but this is a pretty good top 10.

Unfortunately, there's often no reward gained by not cheating. The cheater sometimes appears faster - and management usually doesn't recognize the difference in someone doing the job "right" and someone cutting corners.

Just a thought.

[TomD.inPDX]

You both said a mouthful and you will get no argument from me on any of these points.

[dschenken]

It's worse than that. The cheater can create continuing roadblocks that prevent others from getting their work done in a timely manner, making the cheater look outstanding. I ran into that all the time where users working on detail parts would just up and delete any feature they didn't understand rather than redefine it, leaving me as the top integrator, to rebuild and rebuild with no useful gain from their changes.

I think that most of the cheaters are doing it because they don't actually know how to do the work or don't want to know. When confronted, they certainly don't want to admit they don't and without any confrontation they won't ask because that is also an admission they don't.

[BrianMartin]

Certainly salient points - the problem is that many people are afraid to admit they don't know. Or their ego won't allow them to admit it. Or worse, they genuinely believe they know what they're doing, they are just mistaken.

In all cases, management has no clue. To many organizations, one designer/engineer is equivalent to the next. We're all just punching numbers into a computer - certainly one number punching monkey is just as useful as the next.

[mdebower]

I had one manager many years ago that was giving a tour to some visiting dignitaries.  They stopped in the doorway to our design office that had 3 engineers working in it and said,  "...and here are some of our engineers.  We throw them a few bananas and they keep pounding away on their keyboards like monkeys."

Must be a prevalent attitude...